


Malleable Fates

by ReminiscentLullaby



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxiety, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Feelings Realization, GabeNath Reverse Bang 2020, Love Confessions, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27878485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReminiscentLullaby/pseuds/ReminiscentLullaby
Summary: A red thread starts materializing around Gabriel's finger nearly two decades after he's already found his soulmate. As he and Nathalie devise a faultless plan to finally win Ladybug and Chat Noir's miraculous and bring back his wife, Gabriel fights the onslaught of confusing feelings brought about the mysterious reappearance of his soulmate string - including the sneaking suspicion that his soulmate maybe isn't who she used to be.
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Comments: 23
Kudos: 61
Collections: GabeNath Reverse Bang 2020





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the GabeNath Reverse Bang! Special thanks to [Nightshade_Blaize](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightshade_Blaize/pseuds/Nightshade_Blaize) for beta reading!

Nathalie takes a finger off the screen to nudge her glasses further up her nose, and the laser-focused expression on her face doesn't waver a millisecond. Stony blue eyes dart across the page, her jaw works in concentration as she gnaws on the inside of her cheek, and she doesn't seem to notice Gabriel's hand as it moves to sweep back a piece of her dark hair that had come loose some time in the last five minutes since they had gotten to work.

"Well," she huffs. She tucks one leg under the other and leans forward, weight shifting on the bed. Gabriel, now in view of the screen, catches sight of the note she'd highlighted with her fingertip as she'd read. "Here's what I've found. There doesn't appear to be any tangible means of enhancing one's own magic outside of the given power-up potions - which, unfortunately, the heroes seem to still have the ability to create for themselves even without this information. There isn't a spell or a potion to make one generally more effective at using their miraculous."

Gabriel frowns, catching on to her word choice. "What do you mean by 'tangible?'"

"There's a suggestion that a holder may strengthen their connection to their miraculous through, perhaps, a meditative or spiritual practice? 'Anyone of admirable valor may wield a miraculous,'" she quotes, "'but it is those who elevate their soul and forge a connection to the essence of their power who transcend mere humanly heroism.' Rather vague, isn't it?"

"Vague and useless," he growls. Gabriel takes the tablet and rereads the highlighted passage. "I don't even know if that means anything."

"It might not. It's difficult to tell. As a whole this grimoire is exceptionally unhelpful for what it's intended to be. Surely, there have to be more in-depth texts out there than this one," Nathalie grumbles. The book itself sits at the foot of the bed with yellow post-it notes sticking out of the pages in all directions. Gabriel thinks she must have devoured that thing a dozen times over, but most of her notes are only speculative. "That, or the translation from the guardians' language to French left out a lot of specifics. Either way, that passage is the best I can do."

"Well, they certainly did a fantastic job of villain-proofing that thing. If they didn't want it falling into the wrong hands, great, we're stuck now, aren't we?" Gabriel mutters darkly. He hands the tablet back to Nathalie. "Of course, how heroes are supposed to know any better, I can't understand."

"Don't worry, Sir. There are advantages to having access to this information, the most important of which is that Ladybug doesn't. We never have to find out if she does know better." Nathalie locks the screen and places the tablet on the bedside table, next to a thermometer and an empty mug of what used to be green tea. She sighs and leans back against the headboard, a pillow folding along the shape of her spine. "And, of course, that we'd found a way to fix the peacock miraculous."

"I couldn't forget that," Gabriel replies quietly. From the other side of the bed, he eyes Nathalie as she tilts back her head and lets her shoulders fall. Forgetting, actually, was all too easy when he'd rarely seen her in anything but her pajamas and without hearing the steady beeping of the heart monitor in the background of every conversation they've had in the last three weeks. For a long time, Nathalie's illness came in waves, pains and weakness ebbing and flowing through her body, often unexpectedly. Since he'd fixed the miraculous after the defeat of Miracle Queen, she was always tired, always weak. Never to the extent that she used to be. Just a slow and constant current of sick.

She'd never ceased to offer her help. Gabriel learned Nathalie was capable of diligent work in any environment, even if that environment was a humidified bedroom with scraps of paper littering the rug and the sheets where she laid in her pajamas for most of the day, wires running under her sleeve. She transformed into Mayura a couple times, when he'd deemed it necessary and got her to promise she would try to sleep immediately after, but Gabriel knew she would give more of her time and energy as quickly as he asked.

He has her study the grimoire for the most part, although Gabriel had scanned it himself as he was working on the peacock miraculous's repair, and he failed to come across anything in particular that hadn't caught his eye before the text was readable. It gives her something to do, something which she can believe is important, even if Gabriel already has the sense that it wouldn't be of the most relevant or invaluable help. At least it keeps her off her feet as much as possible.

"Good thing," she says, after a pause, "that we have our own means of strengthening our powers."

Gabriel's hand clenches around his red and white ascot, which he'd tossed onto the bed when he entered. As he returns it to the space beneath his throat where the butterfly miraculous is pinned, he replies, "Nathalie, you know I am reluctant to utilize Scarlet Moth again."

"Yes, but you'd said that before the peacock miraculous was fixed. There's no reason not to make the attempt again," she reasons.

"Maybe not."

His tone doesn't please her. Nathalie watches him with a slightly raised brow, then gives a shrug. "I suppose now that my miraculous is good as new, we can try something else. Instead of using Catalyst to enhance your powers, Hawk Moth could enhance mine."

"Yours?"

"It's something we haven't tried yet."

"We could…" The thought intrigues him, but his stomach tightens and he glances down. "But it might be too soon."

"Sir."

"You still need to recover."

"If you insist. But I will be ready at any moment to try something new. We haven't run out of options yet, you know."

Gabriel smiles gently. The reassurance warms his heart, a welcome offering following his failure in New York not ten days prior, which has weighed on his spirits significantly. "I'm grateful for that, Nathalie."

He begins to reach out his hand, intent on clasping it over her own which sits upon her angled knee, but he pauses suddenly, eyes flying to his pinkie.

_What?_

Gabriel holds his breath.

Was that-?

He pulls his hand back and inspects it closely. Had his mind played a trick on him? He could have sworn he'd seen - for just a fraction of a second - something he hadn't seen around his finger in years.

A red thread.

"Sir?" Nathalie murmurs.

It couldn't have been, after this much time...

Gabriel narrows his eyes. No, he was sure he'd seen it. Bright red string, an unmistakable color. For a moment he wondered if it was a loose thread from his trousers, but he shook his head at this mistake. It was the red string. The one that leads you to your soulmate. Appearing around the tip of his pinkie almost twenty years after he'd already found her.

_How bizarre_ , he thinks.

"Nothing." Gabriel pushes himself to the edge of the bed and rises. "Nathalie."

"Yes?"

"I will put some more thought into your suggestion," he tells her as he peels his eyes from his fingers and holds them stiffly at his side. "You're right. Akumatizing Mayura will be worth a try."

She lights up, reaching for her tablet again. "I can work on a battle strategy, Sir."

"If you'd like, but we will still wait until you are more fully healed." Gabriel dips his head at her. "But your eagerness is, as always, very appreciated."

He leaves her, and as soon as he is in the hallway once more, he holds his hand up to the light. For a moment, the red string is visible again, in the sunlight pouring into the atrium. It is wrapped around his pinkie like a perfectly-fitted ring, and Gabriel's heart leaps.

_I can't believe it_.

He moves his hand, and the thread vanishes.

As he travels down the stairs back to the ground floor, Gabriel recalls the first time he had ever seen the thread, eighteen years ago, when he was still young and relatively unaccomplished, having just moved to Paris from the countryside. It appeared his first night here, a surefire signal that his soulmate was closer to him than they had ever been, and the moment it caught his eye in the moonlight flooding through his window like a dewy web, he was determined to find them.

It took five months to cross her path for the first time, five months of letting that thread taunt him in its vibrant color and indefinite length, five months of attempting to follow it only for it to disappear before he could get very far. He wondered if his soulmate on the other end was just as eager to meet him. He imagined her face, he pictured her in the color red. The designs that got him discovered in the world of fashion had been the ones inspired by the woman in his head.

And he met her, at long last, at a gala. There had been talk of an up-and-coming designer, and she was one of the first to reach him, guided by the thread that had materialized around her pinkie as she stood with a tall glass of champagne in the center of the room, the life of the party that she was. Emilie Graham de Vanily was not the woman he had visualized for all of those months. Somehow, she was even more perfect, even more of a dream. She wore not red, but glittering gold, the sleeves falling down slender ivory shoulders, the train sweeping across marble to the captivating rhythm of her stride as she approached. Gabriel couldn't believe what he was seeing. He couldn't believe the string between them was slackening as she closed their distance. Her smile was radiant as she extended her hand his way.

"It's amazing to finally meet you, my dear."

That evening and the months leading up to it had felt something like magic. That Emilie woke up beside him every day for years was all that could convince him his reality was truly so wondrous. Gabriel's heart is warmed by the memories, but as he opens the door to his atelier and comes face to face with the gilded portrait of his wife on the back wall, suddenly a chill runs over his skin and a weight settles in the pit of his stomach.

Emilie is gone.

She is no longer there in the morning to assure him he hadn't dreamed it all away.

With bitterness, Gabriel considers the way he had spoken of their advantage just minutes earlier in Nathalie's room. _Vague and useless_ , he'd said, as if they surely were not closer to victory than they had ever been before. The darkness of demoralization had been closing in on him since the New York fiasco. Great length to great length he stretched for his shot at triumph and each time, he missed.

But this red thread. It has to be appearing again for a reason, and letting his gaze absorb every fine detail of Emilie's shining likeness, he becomes firmly convinced it is because he needs the encouragement to continue his pursuit to bring her back. As long as she rests on the other end of the string, she must be in reach of the outstretched hand desperate to pull her back. Gabriel deeply inhales, relaxing his shoulders, expanding his chest, intent on not letting his vigor weaken again.

Quietly, Nooroo emerges to his right. Just a single glance his way reveals a nervous expression not unlike his typical resting visage, but briefly, Gabriel catches a flash of a thought quite close to the surface, something which Nooroo appears eager to voice. He would not have been prompted to speak if his stare was not unmistakably fixed on Gabriel's right hand.

Gabriel turns suddenly, startling the kwami back several inches as he shivers with intimidation. The contemplative light in his coin-sized eyes dims away. Gabriel demands, "Did you see it?"

"See - no, no, Master," Nooroo stutters. His wings flicker behind his head. "The red thread is only visible to yourself and your soulmate."

"How did you suppose that's what I was referring to?"

This question jars Nooroo enough to make him go still. He is unable to meet his holder's challenging glare, aiming his gaze at the floor. His voice is just audible enough that Gabriel can strain to make out the whispered words: "Master, you are aware I can sense your emotions."

A moment of hesitation passes before Gabriel, who'd been leaning menacingly forward, pulls back his weight and lets his hands relax by his side. He does not respond to Nooroo's gingerly half-question. He is aware. Subconsciously, he has always been aware, but he supposes he never cared enough about Nooroo's opinion to be overly cognizant of whatever of his own emotions the kwami was picking up on. He certainly hasn't imagined Nooroo's emotional analysis could be so _specific_. Gabriel sighs, returning his stare to the back of the room and the portrait that hangs there.

"Well, Nooroo, what is it?" he growls.

"Master?"

"You have something to say about this, don't you?" Gabriel's patience wanes thin. "Out with it."

"No, no, it's nothing, Master," the kwami insists. His inflection suggests otherwise. Nooroo's sentence trails off gradually into a tense, thoughtful quiet. Before Gabriel can prompt him again, he continues softly, "It wasn't about - I was just thinking about Miss Nathalie, Master."

Gabriel glances back at him with a raised brow. "Nathalie?"

"About her plan," he corrects. "Her suggestion. If you are determined to reunite with your soulmate, Master, she is a good person to turn to."

Nooroo is right. Nathalie has been the source of their best plans and Gabriel doesn't doubt her thorough thinking will eventually bring them to victory. But it is needless to say, and bizarrely, Nooroo has said it anyway, Nooroo who rarely speaks, Nooroo whose voice is so paper thin that his words are sometimes gentle puffs of breath, and whose tone this time has taken on the substance of some implicit meaning within the very act of them being spoken.

Gabriel simply murmurs, "What?"

"You'll find that soon enough, Master."

This not being the explanation he had been seeking, Gabriel hardens his jaw and drops the conversation, now on his way to visit the repository.

Over the course of several days, Gabriel catches glimpse of the red thread multiple times, but never for longer than a few seconds at once. Often he wonders if this could be a promising omen, if the plan he and Nathalie are developing together could be the one that at long last will yield the two miraculous he's been after all this time. The thought is overwhelming, and at many points, he needs to be drawn back to earth by Nathalie's touch, settling between his shoulder blades or around his forearm as she leans in and whispers, "Sir?"

Gabriel brings his right hand up to his heart and feels it pulse under his palm. The feeling is too intense to be euphoric. His eyes search for a string that has since disappeared and he is almost relieved not to find it again. If this is truly an omen, he has nothing to fear. But he can sense his closeness to his soulmate and there's no quelling the dread of her being somehow ripped away from him again.

Nathalie sighs, pressing her forehead to his shoulder. He is grateful for her comfort.

As his confidence in the meaning of the thread deepens, so does, conversely, his unease. One night past eleven, he leans against the headboard of Nathalie's bed while she lays up beside him, hovering over her tablet and the outline of their plan to akumatize Mayura and command an army of sentimonsters. His eyes begin to drift shut under the weight of a long and tedious day when Nathalie stiffens and a pained moan breaks through the monotonous beat of the heart monitor. Straightening to alertness, Gabriel turns to find her clutching her head, face twisted in a grimace. He moves closer at once and runs a hand down the curve of her spine.

"Nathalie, that's enough." He takes the tablet from her lap. "It's late. You've worked on this for hours."

"And I was nearly finished," she grumbles. She inhales sharply through her teeth, fingers sinking into her temples. "We could have put this in action as soon as tomorrow."

Gabriel's stomach flips as she speaks. Tomorrow would have been too early even if she hadn't developed a headache now to fill him with more doubt. Despite the imminence of triumph, a part of him is still reluctant to rush head first into their new plan at the possibility of her expense. He could wait, he _should_ wait, he -

The hand upon her back freezes. Gabriel blinks at the thread that has appeared around his hand, and he follows the string with his eyes as it coils beneath her, then runs across the sheets in the small space between them and vanishes.

"It..it's fine," he says thinly. Encouraging her to lie down, he moves the pillow to rest comfortably under her head. "The plan is not going anywhere. I know you're eager to carry it out, but there's still time." He takes her glasses and folds them onto the table beside her.

"Yes," she sighs, shutting her eyes. "But you've seemed anxious yourself, Sir."

"Anxious?"

"I figured you would like to have this done as soon as possible. All this time working out the details, it seems to put a strain on you."

"I have a feeling this will work," he says softly, tightening his right hand. The red thread is a weightless entity, but he can't help but feel the imagined pressure of it wrapped around his finger. "Admittedly, I would like to get over with, but we can't leap straight into it when you're still in such a precarious position."

"I am sorry."

"Please, don't be," he replies. Gabriel gets out of bed and pulls the sheets up closer to her chin. "I'll send out other akumas in the meantime." He _has_ to do something. He can't let himself be deterred when his soulmate is so close. The more the thread appears to remind him of the urgency of his goal, the worse it feels to hesitate, as if every instance he chooses to hold back sinks him further and further into a cavity he can't escape, where one day, the thread won't be strong enough to drag him free.

He tells Emilie he is sorry for making her wait. The string doesn't appear when he stands before the capsule peering into her restful expression, and it feels like the nearest thing to a silent treatment he can receive from somebody who can only be silent these days. Would Emilie believe him if she could hear him? Would she tell him to spare the apology and put his remorse into action? Certainly, Gabriel is coming no closer to her by standing here, by fearing the string or the lack thereof and what it means and what it wants. It _should_ be a source of reassurance, a bright and beautiful promise as it had meant to him eighteen years ago, yet he can feel himself withering, like a plant under too much sun.

One evening, still before he is ready to let Mayura absorb any additional power that could harm her, he unleashes an akuma attack on his own that is unsurprisingly thwarted, in spite of his best efforts to ultimately avoid endangering Nathalie's health if possible. In the moments following his defeat, the loop of scarlet thread materializes around his glove, vibrant under the light of the falling sun, pulled across the space like a red strike through his soul, a mark of warning against failure.

Hawk Moth waits for the string to disappear. His eyes burn, and the grip about his cane is tight enough to ache. The chance of failure is unbelievably slim if he were to akumatize Mayura. Ladybug and Chat Noir surely couldn't fend off an army of sentimonsters, not if the amokatized object was kept safe in the lair with himself and Mayura. He and Nathalie have gone over the plan dozens of times already. It can't fail. It won't. They would win. Without a doubt, they would win, unless -

The thread doesn't vanish.

\- unless it is too much for Mayura to withstand. Unless she isn't strong enough yet to control an army that large. Unless he has to take back the akuma to protect her because there is no way she would back down on her own. She is too selfless for that. Too brave. Too careless.

But they have to try.

Hawk Moth has been holding his breath, and he releases it only when the thread finally disappears, flickering out of existence as if being lost in shadow.

He owes it to Emilie to try.

And if this truly has anything to do with fate, then Nathalie will be fine. She has to be.

Gabriel detransforms. To Nooroo, he murmurs, "Tomorrow."

Nooroo's eyes flicker. His visage sets in disapproval, something Gabriel is not sure he has ever seen so clearly on the kwami. He presses his hands together nervously, asking, "So soon, Master?"

"I've waited too long already."

"But Miss Nathalie -"

"What of her?" Gabriel sharply challenges. Nooroo shrinks back, his critical look melting back into the more characteristic submissive fear. Lifting his chin, Gabriel lowers his voice and wonders, "I don't understand. You're the one who said I should be focusing on Nathalie's plan. What is this nerve you have to question me now?"

"Master, I'm sorry. I didn't mean-" Nooroo pauses, appearing like he is carefully considering his next words. "Never...never mind."

Gabriel presses no further, but the objection endures in his head long after he has left the lair and returned to his work in the atelier, in spite his best efforts to dismiss the interaction from memory; it endures in his head even when Adrien knocks on the door upon his arrival from a photoshoot and curls his fingers around the door frame with a sort of gingerly curiosity; it endures in his head as his son peers up with green eyes so much like his mother's before him to ask, almost knowing the answer he is going to receive, "How is Nathalie?"

The objection endures and it stirs through his mind and lands somewhere deep in his core. Gabriel forces a scowl and answers, "Nathalie is fine today, Adrien" - the same way she is "fine" every day. It endures as Adrien departs, as the sun makes its descent for the night, and as he climbs the stairs to Nathalie's bedroom to check on her, say good night...

She glances up as he opens the door, eyes lit up, burning against the pale shade of her skin. She is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed with her laptop open and her fingers continuing their rapid typing of whatever email or report that is meant to be occupying her attention.

He intends to ask if she's okay, but the only thing he says at first is - _Tomorrow_ \- "Three days."

Gabriel raises his gaze to the ceiling, just to avoid seeing the thread out of the corner of his eye in the case it appears now that he's changed his mind again. Something must be wrong with him.

Nathalie clears her throat and asks him if he would like to go over the plan.

He's memorized it already. He doesn't need to.

But, exhaling deeply, he lowers his head back down to her eye-level, and the subtle lines of concern drawn between her eyebrows while she splays a hand across the mattress to her left convey to him that she _knows_ he will stay.

Maybe just to listen to her cool and temperate voice for a few minutes, a voice so much gentler than the one inside his head.

Or to soften beneath her touch which so often reaches his shoulder, his back, his heart.

Gabriel nods slowly and shuts the bedroom door behind him.


	2. Part Two

Half-asleep, Gabriel imagines the wide open space making up the opposite end of the mattress. That subtle yet deeply-ingrained memory of the shape of one's own bedroom, which formulates a spatial awareness even in near unconsciousness, fades into the back of his head. He is vaguely cognizant that he turns from his side onto his back, that he tries to pull the covers further up his body. His fingers close over empty air.

He is not under the covers. But he is warm anyway, so it doesn't matter.

There is a sigh in the air, faint and gentle. Gabriel might have soon fallen back into slumber if not for the interfering realization that it is not his own breath he hears. It comes from his right, and then, slowly separated from the atmospheric low-toned quiet of the night, it is accompanied by the steady beeping of the heart monitor that is supposed to be in Nathalie's room.

Nathalie's room.

Gabriel opens his eyes, at once disoriented by the visual proof that he is not in his own bed at all. His glasses are beside him, having fallen off his face some time while he was asleep, and he quickly slips them back on to observe the mostly darkened room. He gathers together the shards of his most recent memory, distorted by the fog still in his mind, and recalls that the light must have been on right before he had fallen asleep. Nathalie must have shut if off. She shut if off instead of waking him. She let him stay there. She -

On the other side of the bed, Nathalie rotates. He watches her fall to her side, slowly bringing her legs up closer to her chest.

He fell asleep next to her. In her bed.

It wouldn't be the first time, but this feels different. It feels careless. Gabriel had spent two or three nights in the past beside Nathalie when her health was at its worst, when he feared she could stop breathing at any given moment, and after hours of lying awake in dark he might drift off for a few minutes at a time until stirred by a cough or a movement. But this, but now, he has no reason to be here. He has nothing to watch out for. She's still sick, but she's not that sick, and the moment he sensed himself dozing off, he should have risen and gone to his own room. He shouldn't have chosen to stay.

They are bringing Emilie back in three days. How could he think to stay?

Gabriel is nauseous with guilt. Cautious not to disturb Nathalie, he takes his phone, gets up from her bed, and retreats to the atrium. It's only just past midnight which means he hadn't been asleep for very long, but that doesn't ease the churning of his stomach as he descends the stairs. Trying to sleep again is pointless, he already knows, and he rushes himself through the atelier in order to reach the lift.

"Master," he hears Nooroo gently say while he jams his fingers into the portrait's hidden buttons.

"Quiet!"

They start to descend.

"Master, I want to warn you -"

" _Warn_ me?" Gabriel snaps, turning his gaze viciously upon the kwami, who bumps against the wall of the lift. "Of what? That I am weak of will? That my feelings betray me? Save it, Nooroo, not another word. I don't need you to tell me what I already know."

He listens, casting his stare low.

As soon as the lift hits the ground, Gabriel steps off and makes swiftly across the iron bridge towards his wife, the cacophonic echo of his footsteps unleashing harsh pangs into his heart. He doesn't know why, but he expected something about Emilie to be different, something he can't quite name as he finally pauses before her capsule to regard a body which hasn't changed at all in over a year, other than in the abstract sense that it's somehow fallen further and further away from him. Did he think he would see a hair out of place, or hands in a different position, or the placid curve of her lips reversed? Did he think the slightest imperfection on her person would indicate she could feel the brokenness inside of him?

Gabriel doesn't realize he is out of breath until now. He slumps, setting his hands on his knees to wait for the hammering of his pulse to slow.

"Emilie," he pants, "Emilie, my love, I'm sorry. I don't know what's gotten into me."

The words are bitter in his mouth. They taste like a lie.

Several strands of hair have fallen over Gabriel's forehead, and with a heavy breath and he brushes them back. Weakly, he murmurs, "It's not going to matter. Everything will be back to normal soon. In three days, you'll be back with us."

He'd said tomorrow just hours ago, and he changed his mind. If he changed it again, then what good are his words now? No, he can't change his mind. He won't.

"Back - back with _me_."

Gabriel straightens. He brushes his clammy hands on his pant legs, feeling like should have brought something along with him. Flowers, perhaps, as if material objects can fill the emptiness of his promises.

But why, _why_ do they feel so empty? The tangle of guilt and shame and misplaced love roiling deep inside him shouldn't be able to withstand the tug of fate cleaving him and Emilie back together again. The red thread is the ribbon tying them to each other, the ribbon that can't be broken, not by time or distance or by wandering eyes, and right now, Gabriel would give anything for that ribbon to appear around his finger and Emilie's as he reaches out and sets his hand upon the glass above her clasped hands.

"I love…"

Around his pinkie, it flickers, and his heart drops. Gabriel eagerly leans forward, watching for the same scarlet line pressing into the skin of Emilie's hand. It's like an artery that links their hearts together, and if it would only materialize around her pinkie, then maybe that could begin to put this nightmare to its end. He could feel as enchanted as he did when he saw for the first time so many years ago.

Gabriel waits.

He holds his breath.

The blood roars in his ears.

He counts to ten, feeling like he is sinking further and further into himself with each passing second, his center of gravity eating him alive.

And the thread does not appear.

Gabriel squints in confusion and curls his fingernails against the glass. Red string is solidly wrapped around his finger, but Emilie's is completely bare. He pulls back, wondering for a moment if her magical stasis is the explanation for this, when he inhales sharply enough to send an icy lance between his lungs at the sight of something he wouldn't have imagined if given a thousand years to guess.

He slowly turns around.

Hovering in the air, running back across the bridge and up the shaft of the lift towards the house, is the red thread.

Leading away from Emilie.

In the complete opposite direction.

Gabriel's first thought is that he is still dreaming, and that everything he sees now is a bizarre manifestation of all of the anxieties that have burdened him since the string had initially reappeared two weeks ago. Maybe he hadn't even fallen asleep in Nathalie's bed and currently tosses and turns in his own room, troubled by the fear that he'd foolishly fallen in love with somebody other than the one person he is destined to love and to need and to want more than anyone. But Gabriel takes a step backwards, and the way the thread softly bounces in the air in reaction to his movement is an indication, along with the shock in his body, that he is awake, and what he is seeing is real.

His second thought is that he's lost his mind. If this isn't a dream, if his eyes aren't playing tricks on him, then perhaps he was crazy from the very beginning, and everything he thought he knew about his soulmate is a lie he told himself in order to live in a fantasy, in order to live a perfect and impossible life, a life that wasn't even meant for him, a life he stole to indulge his wildest dreams.

But a moment later, he shakes the ridiculous thought from his head. It's only slightly more reasonable, slightly less impossible that what he sees now is irrefutable proof that Emile wasn't his soulmate anymore. She was once. She was for a long time. But now she's not.

 _It can't be_ , he thinks.

He'd never met a person all his life whose soulmate had changed. The red thread had led them all to the one and only person they were fated to share their life with and tied them together forever. His grandparents were soulmates. His father's father had died before Gabriel was even born, but his grandmother never saw a new string around her finger for the remaining twenty-five years of her life. His parents were not soulmates - some people, for reasons completely senseless to Gabriel, don't choose to seek out their destined other half, and often pay the price for it in joylessness - but their threads never led anywhere else but away from each other. He's never had a friend or a colleague or an acquaintance ever mention an occurrence so unusual as their soulmate changing. Even if he had, he's not so sure he would even believe it.

How can the person who has been his soulmate for so many years cease to be his soulmate any longer? How can a destiny so firmly and momentously decided that it results in the appearance of a cosmic filament around their skin, suddenly alter? As if it never stood for anything deeper than every other imperfect and incidental relationship in his life? As if it was, even, a mistake?

Gabriel cannot identify the emotion or myriad of emotions that surge through him now. No word in any language he knows can encompass the intensity and turmoil of what he feels, staring open-mouthed at the thread of fate leading away from the woman he'd been so desperate to reunite with all this time.

If it isn't an omen of her return, if it isn't a sign that he'll win, then it has to mean…

Gabriel shuts his eyes, hard enough that there is a rush in his temples.

Then it has to mean it is time to let go.

As the thought strikes, it steals his breath away. Gabriel brings his hands to his chest and struggles to remain upright. In an effort to make breathing easier, he loosens his collar and tosses his ascot onto the ground between his feet. A shiver courses through him as a fingertip brushes against the hard accessory pinned below his throat. He nearly throws it away too, but for just long enough to become aware once again of Nooroo floating silently nearby, he hesitates.

Gabriel's eyes turn icily towards the kwami, who, he thinks, rather boldly returns the glare.

"You," Gabriel snarls.

"Master, what is it?" asks Nooroo, flickering his wings.

"You, you knew about this somehow," Gabriel accuses. "Before we came down here, you said you were going to warn me. You knew that Emilie isn't my" - his voice hitches - "isn't my soulmate anymore. You watched all of this happen and now it's...now it's too late to go back."

Nooroo shakes his head. "Master, I couldn't have been aware that anything had changed about the thread. Only you and your soulmate can see it, remember?" He flies a little closer, reaching out a small lavender hand, "I did know that _you_ have changed, Master. But what could I have done? I have no power to decide what your heart wants. I can only feel what it feels."

Gabriel's head whirls.

"Master?"

"What do you mean, _I've changed_?" His words are hardly audible, but Nooroo seems to hear, tilting his head sympathetically. "What - what could change about me that has the potential to alter fate? What have I done?"

"It is simple, Master, and you already know the answer," replies Nooroo. He has floated even closer now, hovering at eye level just inches before Gabriel's nose. "You have fallen in love with somebody else, somebody who can do more for you now than your previous soulmate. That doesn't mean Mrs. Agreste wasn't just as important to you, only that she has done all she can. Your heart has space for another."

" _No_."

Nooroo recoils slightly. He whispers, "If fates couldn't change, Master, then why is it that souls can go astray?"

Gabriel turns back to Emilie, pierced by a thorn through the heart at the sight of her.

"I mean yours."

He _knows_ what Nooroo means, but he shuts out the thought before it can take its full shape, the same way he has been doing from the moment he saw the thread leading away from Emilie and up to the house, up to the person he is too afraid to admit has changed everything for him.

"Nooroo," Gabriel says. With a sigh, he presses his fingertips under his glasses to wipe away the tears beginning to gather at the corners of his eyes, "If fate can change, then is it truly fate?"

"I do not know, Master. Perhaps, we have been using the wrong words all this time."

Gabriel is weary. He doesn't know how much more of this conversation he can withstand. He certainly can't look any longer at Emilie, as still and unchanging as ever, yet somehow a million miles further away than she had ever been.

"I can't do this," he says.

"Master?"

Gabriel ignores Nooroo and returns to the lift, footsteps crashing carelessly against the iron bridge. He feels numb and exhausted as if he had been running for hours, and nothing but his wish to dream this all away motivates him towards his bedroom now. He tries to pay no mind to the red thread, which still hasn't disappeared, as he steps over it on the black and white checkered floor of the atelier where it stands out plain as blood. He keeps his head raised, he forces the panic out of his mind while he climbs the marble stairs to his room, one foot after the other, until…

He pauses. Slowly, as if knowing he will regret it, he turns to glance across the wide open atrium to the bedroom directly opposite of his own, and he sees exactly what he expects to.

The string runs under the door, leading, he knows, straight to Nathalie.

Gabriel stares for a moment, feeling himself gradually deflate of what little energy he has left, before he shuts himself in his room for the rest of the night, half-hoping the morning will never come.

* * *

The morning does come, and so do two others, and early on in the third, nearly as soon as Adrien leaves for school, Gabriel knocks on Nathalie's door and tells her, "It's time."

Her smile is bright enough to cast a shadow within him, and as soon as she is out of bed, he turns heel and heads for the lair without turning back around. He takes the lift alone. He hasn't heard Nooroo's voice since yesterday, when the kwami bravely, unwisely suggested his holder rethink the decision to bring Emilie back after all, because if a soulmate can change, then surely it can change back, and in a way, it will be like nothing had changed at all.

Nooroo wordlessly shook his head at Gabriel and made himself scarce after this.

Gabriel can still feel him staring.

By the time Nathalie arrives in the lair a few minutes later, out of her pajamas and in a turtleneck and jeans, he has transformed into Hawk Moth and holds out his palm for a butterfly's gentle landing. She emerges at his side, blue eyes following the fluttering pearl white wings of the creature first attracted to the eager open hand.

"Prepare yourself," he growls. Nathalie's gaze flicks to him. Her expression changes visibly, smile wavering. He pretends not to notice how she hesitates.

Recovering swiftly, Nathalie pins the peacock brooch to her sweater and murmurs, "Duusu, spread my feathers." Blue light surges down the length of her body, and for the first time in a long time, Hawk Moth lays his eyes on Mayura standing tall at his right hand, illuminated in the early morning sun embracing them beneath the bright rose window.

Hawk Moth glances back down towards his hands and closes the butterfly in his grip, but before infusing the creature with magic, he asks, almost under his breath, "Do you feel okay?"

"Yes," she replies, just as quietly. Hawk Moth expects her to leave it there, but he stiffens a second later when he feels her touch on his arm. "Do you, Gabriel?"

His instinct is to not to resist. He wants to step closer, to turn her way, shake the butterfly from his fingers, but remembering himself, he flinches away.

Perhaps, he does this too quickly, for Mayura appears bruised by the gesture. Her hand hangs in midair, her magenta eyes flash with hurt that she attempts to conceal after a moment, peeling back from him and rolling back her shoulders to assume an air of indifference. It catches his eye, how quickly and naturally she manages to hide her woundedness. The move looks familiar, well-practiced.

Hawk Moth shakes the concern from his head. Magic hisses around his hands as he imbues the butterfly with his energy, creating the akuma that will at long last, put this miserable story to an end.

All he has to do now is send the akuma forth, let it absorb into Mayura's miraculous and transform her into something truly unstoppable. From there, she can take the reins; from there, all of his vexing doubts can be swallowed by the power which will be out of his hands. Offering the akuma will be harder than letting her keep it as long as necessary to win. He just has to pivot towards her now, drop his hand, enable the blackened butterfly to take flight, let its power devour her body and construct something newer and stronger that can finally restore the old.

Seconds past. Enough of them for Mayura to prompt him (and he cannot help but notice the absence of her touch this time). Hawk Moth doesn't move. Onyx wings quiver and brush against his finger tips.

 _You have to do this_.

But he can't. He feels frozen in place, seized by a force he can't locate.

In his chest, there is a thundering. He hardly recognizes the flare of worry just above his heart, the one that registers through the brooch, emanating from the woman still waiting at his side. The pounding of his pulse is so vigorous, he is terrified Mayura can hear it, terrified as if she can't already sense whatever emotion is powerful enough to make him hesitate like this.

"What's going on?"

As she speaks, Hawk Moth inhales abruptly, for once again there gradually appears that treacherous thread around the tip of his pinkie finger. For three days, he has been able to disregard it; he has so resolutely rejected the sight of it that was almost capable of making it vanish on his command. But now, when Mayura stands so near, when he can feel the heat of her gaze on his cheek, can bear in mind her boundless determination to help him through any means necessary, even when it is her on the other end of that string, the walls Hawk Moth has erected in his head to shut out this reality come crumbling down. There is nothing he can do to will the thread out of sight.

He follows its path, gingerly angling his head in Mayura's direction, until his eyes land on her left pinkie, where the other end is tied.

It is the first time he has seen it around her hand.

Mayura's stare is narrowed and inquisitive. She doesn't seem to notice the string herself, not at first. Not until Hawk Moth glances between her hand and his own several times, until he lets the akuma go and snaps his fingers to free it of its magic.

"What are you - ?" Mayura holds out her left hand, blinks at the thread. "Oh, God. Gabriel, do you see it too?"

Hawk Moth watches the pearlescent creature join the throng of others on the illuminated floor around their feet.

His silence must be confirmation for her, because her cheeks flush a darker shade of blue. "Wait - wait, no, I don't understand. I didn't think - I thought your soulmate was -"

"Emilie," he murmurs. Mayura seals her lips, clasping her hands over the bottom half of her face. Hawk Moth may have never seen her look so embarrassed. It sent a wrench into his heart. "She _was_."

Hawk Moth sighs and detransforms, paying Nooroo only a sheepish sideways glance when he appears a moment later. The kwami dips his head knowingly and doesn't say a word.

"I didn't realize…" Mayura whispers. She brushes her miraculous. "Fall my feathers."

When the transformation dissolves, it leaves behind a startled, pink-faced Nathalie, evidently searching for something to do with her hands. The red string oscillates between them, and Gabriel seizes some of the slack to lay it across a line in his palm.

"How long," he wonders, "have you seen this thread around your finger?"

Her grimace is a sign she doesn't want to answer, and Gabriel thinks it might be longer than he expects.

"Two weeks? A month?" he prompts.

"A year," she responds.

"Truly?"

"It was May. Not long after…" she trails off. "I'm sorry, I didn't - I didn't expect it. I didn't want it. I thought I was insane when it showed up."

"Nathalie -"

"You'd just lost Mrs...I thought it had to be a mistake."

Sighing, Gabriel gently wraps the string around and around his hand a couple times. It doesn't press too tightly into his skin, hugging his palm comfortably. "No," he grumbles, "It was no mistake."

Nathalie gapes at him. " _How_ did it change?"

"I suppose my fate was never set in stone."

"We can fix this, right?"

"Nathalie, nothing is broken." In his mind, Gabriel hears the words Nooroo had uttered to him three days ago in the aftershock of his crimson red discovery, the shattering apart of everything he thought he knew about love and about himself. "Emilie was my soulmate. She truly was. For eighteen years. But she isn't anymore, and that…" He swallows the impending break in his voice, "that is what it is."

His assistant shakes her head in disbelief. "But after everything? After all we've done? After all you've done to try and bring her back, that's it?" She holds up her left pinkie. "This is...this can't be."

"You said, Nathalie, it was, for a year."

"But I'd never even had a soulmate all my life. One day I wake up and suddenly Gabriel Agreste is on the other end of a thread that didn't use to exist? I thought - I thought maybe the universe had pitied me, or maybe it was telling a cruel joke by showing me a glimpse of a life that would never be mine to live, as much as I wanted it."

He winces at her words and the rising emotion in her voice, building like a newborn fire.

"Oh." His reaction must alert her to the meaning of what she's said. She colors even brighter now, pressing her palms up to her burning cheeks. "Sir - Gabriel, I -"

"Nathalie, are you -?"

"I'd managed to accept it eventually, that you are my soulmate, but I didn't believe in a million years that I could be yours," she interrupts. "I was at peace with that, I assure you. All I wanted was for you to be happy. I wanted to help you reunite with your soulmate, because I believed just like you that Emilie could make you and your family whole again."

"Nathalie." He reaches out and takes her by the shoulders, and she gazes up at him like a deer in headlights, "are you in love with me?"

" _Yes_ ," she answers, speaking as if the word alone has the power to lift all the force of gravity.

Gabriel's breath catches in his throat.

Clasping her head, Nathalie murmurs, "I think I need to sit." She sinks to the floor, and Gabriel follows her down, wrapping an arm around her waist. With her so discomposed, it is difficult for him to tell if the heat in her skin is a result of fever or chagrin, but either way, his instinct is to hold her close. It's been days since they've found themselves in this position - only days, but it feels longer. It feels like he's needed this moment of stillness and quiet and warmth all his life.

But Nathalie is not as relaxed in his arms as she has been in the past. The discomfort of the situation seems to permeate the entire room, and it is not long before Gabriel relinquishes his hold of her to help dispel some of the unavoidable awkwardness between them. Coming face to face with his soulmate for the first time eighteen years ago had felt like a scene in a fairytale, filled with music and glamor and gold. But this encounter, this was all darting eyes and confusion and touches lingering longer than they should.

He supposes that's how he's felt for a long time.

Nathalie, pressing her hands to her temples, whispers, "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"It sounds so stupid, but," she shakes her head, "I - I developed feelings for you before the string ever appeared. Seeing it on my hand, it was like confirmation of something I'd already suspected for a while, that I'd fallen in love with someone I had no business being in love with. And now you can see the string too, and I can't help but feel like it's my fault somehow, like my feelings messed with something in the universe."

Gabriel's lips curve into a solemn smile. "I don't think that's the case."

"I know, it's silly, but why else would this have happened?"

"It takes two to make a soulmate," he answers, and she looks up at him. "I've been avoiding the truth for a long time."

"What are you saying?" she asks gingerly, though the glittering astonishment in her gaze suggests she might already know.

"It only appeared for me two weeks ago," he begins, holding up his pinkie to observe the string still visibly wrapped around his fingertip. "And at first I thought it was a sign that I was going to bring Emilie back soon. I was sure of it, and to be honest, it scared me. I didn't understand why, but then…" Gabriel flicks his eyes up to Nooroo, whose wing is currently spread to the side to hinder the jittering excited movements of the peacock kwami at his side. "But then, I realized soon enough that the thread didn't lead back to Emilie at all. It led to you."

Nathalie's left hand curls into a fist. White knuckles make the scarlet around her finger seem an astounding shade.

"It all became so clear. All at the same time and all too quickly, that the reason I've been so out of my mind, the reason this thread has been such an unnerving thing is because it had meant all along that I've been falling in love with you too."

Nooroo faintly smiles.

"I didn't think it was possible for things to change," adds Gabriel under his breath. "All this time I've been fighting it, convinced there was nothing left for me without the other half of my soul, but…" He reaches out, brushing his pinkie against the back of her clenched hand, over each of taut tendons, until gradually, her fist relaxes, opening up, turning around to allow him to grasp it with bashful tenderness. "You're here."

Nathalie is breathless. She peers into Gabriel's face with this stunned look in her eyes that nearly wipes the cold and quick-thinking assistant from her visage entirely. She looks, plainly, like a woman in love, and a woman who is amazed to be loved back. Gabriel has no idea how it took him so long to see through her walls when the interior blazes so brightly at him now.

"You love me," she whispers.

Gabriel nods. He leans an inch closer. "I do."

"You're my -" Briefly, she glances down at their thread, at the two ends of it having been joined by their interlocked fingers. "You're my soulmate."

He takes her softly by the chin and nudges her face back up. "I want to tell you I'm sorry I haven't realized it sooner. I didn't know for how long you've felt this way."

"Oh." She grabs his wrist and gives her head a little shake, stirring the strand of hair falling against her forehead. "Gabriel, it's okay. I understand. You don't need to trouble yourself about that."

"You've been put through so much because of my goals."

"Our goals," she tells him. "I wanted it as much as you did. I wanted you to be happy, at any cost."

He strokes that strand of hair. "You were a better partner than I deserved."

"Well, you are the only one I could ever ask for." Nathalie very nearly kisses him, and Gabriel wishes that she will, but a heartbeat before her lips reach his own, she pulls back and turns her gaze to the ceiling, where a number of butterflies flit amongst themselves in the brightening morning light. She clutches the brooch on her turtleneck. "So, I suppose we're not…"

With a twinge in his heart, Gabriel closes his eyes and answers, "No. It's over."

"Are you sure?"

He heaves a sigh, and there is a lift of weight in his chest that slowly sinks back down again, a weight he knows will persist no matter the answer he gives. Eighteen years cannot be shrugged away as simply as a cape. Grief cannot be swallowed. Gabriel may only now have realized a loss that had occurred a year ago, and one of the many thorns that pierce his center is the fear that Emilie has been gone long before he ever thought to say goodbye.

Nonetheless, he murmurs gravely, "I'm sure."

He helps Nathalie back to her feet. She seems a little unsteady, and Gabriel gives a squeeze of her hand, remarks that without the miraculous to stress about, she might recover faster, which elicits a gentle laugh. As they travel from the lair to the atelier to Nathalie's room, there is an air of something strange between them, something which might not be so easily shaken after the rather unconventional way they had discovered each other, but Gabriel knows he likes the feeling of Nathalie's hand intertwined with his own. The same way he knows he likes the weight of her head on his shoulder, the warmth of her touch on his arm or his back, the sincerity of her deep blue eyes whenever she spoke to him.

Maybe this is a painful but remarkably merciful way for fate to change, and maybe it is what fate believes he needs most.

Or maybe fate has watched him begin to forge a path of his own, leading to the person who'd been doing the same, and let them go.

He can't know.

All he has is a thread.

And the woman on the other end.

When he leaves Nathalie at the door of her room, he lifts her knuckles to his lips and tells her to rest well.

She blinks at him, and there are tears in her eyes. Gabriel flinches as she wraps around her arms around him in an embrace, murmuring, "I can't believe this."

He kisses her again, on the top of her head. "Neither can I, my dear. It is…" he chuckles, "it is like a weird dream. A weird and beautiful dream."

They pull apart. Hands untangle, and as Nathalie steps inside, the red thread vanishes. It appears not again.

And it doesn't need to, now that they've found each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please make sure to check out [xx_Katastrophe's art!](https://xx-katastrophe.tumblr.com/post/637222239675269120/malleable-fates-written-by-reminiscentlullaby-on) Thanks for reading, and remember to comment ;)


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